Potzer: An inept poker player, derived from a German word meaning bungler.
I'm not sure whom I dread hearing from more, Doomsday Don or my brother Ira. Doomsday Don bombards me with obituary notices and dire warnings of some imminent apocalyptic disaster. With Ira, it's even worse. He asks me questions about poker - really incisive questions, you understand, like how many times a player is allowed to cut the cards, or whether a spade flush beats a club flush.
My brother plays in a nickel-and-dime potzer poker game in the clubhouse of his retirement community in New Jersey. While they play dealer's choice, the only game ever dealt is seven-card stud, because that's the only game any of them know how to play - or have even heard of, for that matter.
But that was about to change, because these guys are sharp and alert, and one of them recently discovered hold'em being played on television. Since Ira is convinced that I'm an authority on poker (I guess I am, compared to all the potzers he plays with), he phoned to get more information about this "new" game. As he began talking, I was immediately reminded of his depth of knowledge.
"Hey, little brother," he said, "do you know anything about a poker game called Texas holdup?"
"It's called hold'em," I groaned. Trying to change the subject, I asked how the weather was in Jersey.
"Cold. Now, about 'hold them,' or whatever you call it, tell me how you play it."
"You get two cards down and five in the middle, and you make your best hand with them. Well, nice talking with you, Ira."
"Not so fast, Max. What's this 'plop' thing they're always talking about?"
"You mean the flop? Those are the first three cards dealt on the board. They're community cards."
"Community? You mean like the community we live in here? I understand."
Sure you do, I thought. His probing continued. I managed to explain what "fourth street" meant, though I lost him when I tried to describe "the river," and had to change it to "fifth street."
After an hour of torture, I was ready to scream. "Well, now you know how to play hold'em," I assured him. "Enjoy the game."
My brother wasn't about to let me off the hook that quickly. "All right, now how about giving me some tips on strategy."
"Why don't you just read a good book on hold'em? Dan Harrington has a great one; so does Barry Greenstein. Then there's Phil Hellmuth's book,
Cry Me a River."
"Reading a book takes too long. You just tell me."
"Why don't you talk to Barbara? She gives poker lessons for $100 an hour, but she'll give you a discount."
"
No!" he yelled. "I want you to tell me!"
I gave up. "OK, the best and simplest advice I can give you is to play big cards."
"We do," he replied. "It's hard for us to see the cards sometimes, so we use those jumbo decks. What else can you tell me?"
"Well, position is very important."
"Position? What difference does it make how I sit?"
"No, I mean position in relation to the buttons."
"Buttons? Hey, we don't play for buttons. We play for real money."
Sure, like 5 and 10 cents is real money. I began to wonder if I could salvage something out of this by making it into a column, but then I thought better of it. In the first place, nobody would believe it, and I had been warned by Barry Shulman not to write any more cornball columns. But then my brother kept giving me more stupid material. When I advised him to always try to play suited, he said he doesn't even own a suit. When I referred to a nut flush, he asked if I meant spades or clubs.
This was sounding more and more like an Abbott and Costello routine. As we continued, and I used terms such as blinds, pot odds, implied odds, rainbow flop, double belly-buster, and so on, Ira got increasingly confused. And I didn't dare use the term "limp," for fear of insulting all the players in his game.
"Well, I think I've got it now," my brother finally said, unconvincingly. "I'll tell the guys everything you said, and we'll try out 'hold them' the next time we play."
"I'll alert
ESPN," I told him. "Maybe they can make an instructional video out of it."
He had one final question, asking what stakes they should play. "Might as well play no-limit, like everybody else," I suggested. What a mistake that turned out to be!
The game ended up a disaster worse than anything that even Doomsday Don could conjure up. Everything went wrong. Among other things, they kept losing the button because they used a shirt button, and it kept getting mixed up with the chips, and then they couldn't remember whether to deal the downcards or the "plop" first. Finally, a half-hour into the game, everything blew up.
In what would be the biggest pot that any of them had ever seen, Manny moved all in for $2.30. Then, Harold called all in for $1.75, Eddie raised all in for $2.95, Henry put in his last 40 cents, and Ira, Jack, and Sol all called for their last dollar or so. At the showdown, Henry, the 40-cent bettor, had the best hand, Eddie, the biggest bettor, ended up with the worst hand, and I forget the rest.
Of course, nobody had a clue about main and side pots, so all the chips had been shoved into one pile in the middle of the table, causing a fierce argument to break out over who got what. This was complicated by another debate over whether Sol's 8-high spade flush beat Jack's 9-high club flush (and please don't ask me how they could end up with two flushes in different suits). The yelling got louder and louder, until an elderly woman in a unit across the street screamed, "Shut up, you morons!"
They finally more or less divided up the chips, though every player would always think that he got shortchanged. The game broke up, the players were thrown out of the clubhouse, and they stopped talking to one another. But after about a month, having nothing better to do, they declared a truce and began playing again - with the strict understanding that hold'em was banned.
Well, that's it, and it's all true. I just hope Ira never asks me about Omaha.
Max Shapiro, a lifelong poker player and former newspaper reporter with several writing awards to his credit, has been writing a humor column for Card Player ever since it was launched 20 years ago. His early columns were collected in his book, Read 'em and Laugh.
